AnySquared Spotlight Art Talk: Tracy Kostenbader. AnySquared Spotlight art talks highlight artists of all ages and experiences and include both members and friends. See videos of spotlight art talks on our YouTube Channel.
BE PART OF THE DISCUSSION Wednesday, August 18th at 7:30pm:
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ABOUT TRACY KOSTENBADER
tracykostenbader.com | IG: @tracykostenbader
blog: tracykostenbader.tumblr.com
Tracy Kostenbader is a visual and social artist who co-founded AnySquared as an artist collaborative in 2010 to develop art projects with others in rejection of an elitist view of art and institutions. Functioning on the basic premise of mutual aid and cooperation, Tracy has also helped build a unique organization and space in Chicago where people come from all over the city to participate and build projects together.
She transformed her home studio to make space for other artists where people can interact and produce art together. Tracy has been hosting AnySquared’s free weekly artmaking studio days more than a decade and continues to mentor emerging artists to expand their ideas about how to create their work.
In AnySquared, she spearheads collaborations with a network of fellow artists and groups and brings people together. She leads visual arts projects where participants are included in the process of designing and producing them. She creates arts programming, curates exhibitions, and nurtures others to also become arts organizers and make more challenging arts projects.
In her day jobs, Tracy Kostenbader is freelance Book Conservator at the Adler Planetarium and an exhibit designer and graphic designer at Spertus Institute. She brings these honed skills with her to AnySquared projects.
Tracy’s philosophy is rooted in collaboration. Her history of work with social justice campaigns has a profound effect on her ideas as an artist. For many years, she worked as an organizer and also legal assistant to help free political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. In the 1990s, as part of the Campaign to Free Manuel Salazar (a now freed artist who was once on death row), Tracy organized over 70 exhibits of his work 1992–1996. Since 2000, she has been a long-time designer for the Americas Media Initiative which includes the Chiapas Media Project and Cuba Media Project. Tracy continues to support the quest for justice and encourages cooperation, and not competition, among people. Working together with others is the underpinning of AnySquared Projects.
While producing collaborative visual arts projects, Tracy has maintained her own art practice. She explores personal and political themes with paintings, drawings, and digital images.
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AnySquared is an all-volunteer collaborative and artists network. Propelled by a deep sense of cooperation with artists, neighbors and the wider community, our mission is to support, produce and promote collaborative projects that facilitate arts activities through inclusive participation. Our foundation is built upon the idea that we can do anything as long as we do it together.